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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bioethics Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Some monkey business in autism research (or, why it is not a good idea to provoke Orac)

Believe it or not, even I, Orac, sometimes get tired of blogging about antivaccination idiocy. Indeed, this week was just such a time. I hope you can’t blame me. After all, the last few months have been so chock-full of some of the most bizarre and annoying antics of antivaccinationists at such a frequent clip […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Quackery

Autism and vaccines: The story morphs

I have to hand it to Dan Olmsted. As Dr. Michael Egnor is for “intelligent design” creationism, ol’ Danny Boy is the Energizer Bunny of antivaccinationism. Tag-teaming with fellow “journalist” David Kirby, who seems able to live rather well without actually, you know, having a regular job, ex-UPI correspondent Olmsted form the not-so-dynamic duo of […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Entertainment/culture Medicine Politics Popular culture Quackery Television

The Hannah Poling case: Autism rebranded again

Damn you, mercury militia. I had had another topic entirely in mind for this week’s post, but, as happens far too often, news events have overtaken me in the form of a story that was widely reported towards the end of last week. It was all over the media on Thursday evening and Friday, showing […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Surgery

David Kirby and the government “concession that vaccines cause autism”: The incredible shrinking causation claim

I didn’t want to blog about this. I really didn’t. No, the reason why I didn’t want to blog about this latest screed by mercury militia enabler David Kirby is not because it is about any sort of slam-dunk proof that vaccines do after all cause autism, a mistaken impression that you might get if […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Yet another really bad day for antivaccinationists: This time there’s no link between the MMR and autism

I hadn’t planned on blogging about vaccines again for a while. Really, I hadn’t. Even I realize the risk of beating the proverbial dead horse just one time too often. Also, It seems that I’ve been writing about antivaccination loons a lot lately, even more than usual. However, aside from a prime time spot for […]